Remember The Energy Crisis?

Daniel Yergin's analyses of that debacle always stood apart, characterized
by their recognition that market forces would work if given a chance to.
And they did. Or else we wouldn't be wondering today what ever happened to
the Energy Crisis. It's nowhere to be seen or painfully felt. The relief
is palpable, if anybody would care to notice.

This happy ending hasn't been the result of price controls, rationing and
all the rest of those counter-productive "fixes" that still attract
statist theoreticians. It turns out the country wasn't so much addicted to
oil all those errant years as to the quack cures government kept producing
to cure our addiction.

As for the shortage of natural gas, it's vanishing, too, as the process
nicknamed fracking (for Induced Hydraulic Fracturing) continues to
revolutionize the nation's petroleum industry -- and, increasingly, the
world's. There are other reasons for this revolution, like the expansion
of drilling in Alaska, the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, but fracking
may be the biggest explanation for the dramatic turnaround in petroleum
production.

American oil output is up by more than half just since 2008. Oil imports,
which accounted for 60 percent of the country's domestic consumption in
2005, is now down to 35 percent, or about where it was before these
successive Energy Crises first struck in 1973.

The fading of the Energy Crisis from the news has been so happy if
scarcely noticed a development that a president who's dragged his feet
every step along the way, and who still finds ways to discourage drilling
in the Gulf and continues to hold up construction of the XL pipeline to
carry all that oil from Canada, now takes credit for this turnaround in
American fortunes.

Did you notice that the country's trade deficit fell in October? The good
news was attributed largely to oil exports, which have risen to an
all-time high. Not because of this administration's policies but despite
them.

If there's credit to be given, and there certainly is, the lion's share of
it should go to a man who's scarcely mentioned by this president and his
coterie of economic theorists: George P. Mitchell, the old wildcatter,
dreamer, investor and inventor who died earlier this year at the age of
94. Born of immigrant Greek parents in Galveston, he was just about the
most American character in this country's recent economic history --
always trying something new, always moving on to the next dream after the
first one went bust. The man just would never give up.

George Mitchell never gave up on the offbeat idea of fracking despite
years of disappointment and ridicule as he pursued black gold in the
Barnett Shale out in the middle of Texas. He was always staking whatever
he had left on one more roll of the dice. Till he hit the jackpot for us
all.

And, please, Mr. President, don't tell us he "didn't build that." Some of
us know better. And realize it on those rare occasions when we wonder what
ever happened to the Energy Crisis. What did? It fell victim to an
American entrepreneur named George Mitchell and all those others who
followed in his footsteps through one now booming oilfield after another.
Let's just say the Energy Crisis was done in by the free market -- once it
was freed.